ESSAY: The Role Of The Museum
Recently, it has come to my attention that the material object and the role of the museum is being examined in the context of its past and in particular Western Institutions and their colonial history. It would seem that it is not possible to undo the past but perhaps it is possible to learn, adjust and seek a more equitable future.
View inside Pitt Rivers Museum
Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford have a number of interesting talks under the title ‘Labelling Matters’. There are questions and issues around words used to describe objects on display which are offensive to the cultures from where they came from. Marenka Thomson Odlum explains that these labels ‘have to be removed’ but she also suggests they could be ‘contextualised to teach people the frame and reference from which these objects were collected and the history behind those words.’ Could she be suggesting that purely removing an offensive label is not enough but that in fact education is required to understand why these words were used? Perhaps if understanding is gained it will create greater respect and empathy for the cultures that have been offended, rather than trying to erase a sensitive issue that cannot be undone.
Wayne Modest, Director of Content for the National Museum of World Cultures, asks ‘how do we work at undoing those structures of coloniality that are still ensnared in these disciplinary practices.’ But he too explains ‘by undoing it doesn’t mean we can move back to a past where everything was wonderful.’ In Critical Practices talk #6 Modest talks with Caroline Rito about the subject of the trouble around ethnographic museums. He is in favour of understanding colonial influence and contribution towards the idea of the museum today, how enmeshed these are in our experiences and then imagine a more ‘equitable and better future’.
Rather than hiding the past, it could be and perhaps is the museums role to educate the viewer. In a museum such as Pitt Rivers Museum many of the objects were once used by cultures that knew and understood their meaning. They were not lifeless displays, encased, presented and classified far removed from their original context. An openness around the circumstances of how the museum came to obtain the object or objects and a move towards including the voice of the cultures involved seems appropriate in current times. ‘The difficult, complex economies out of which objects came, can help us to understand, […] one another and together …’. It is possible to fashion our museums in an equitable manner, to attend to the coloniality of the object but also be in dialogue with the people with whom the objects have meaning. (Modest, 2021)